Wednesday, February 21, 2018

In 1848 three hundred men and women gathered at Seneca Falls, NY and begin the work of getting American women the right to vote. The 19th amendment, which finally grants this basic democratic right to half of America's citizens, won't be ratified until 1920. This volume tells the stories of that battle and the women (and a few men) who fought it. The passion of the opposition and the internal squabbling and questionable choices of the organizations working toward votes for women make it clear why it took so long for this to happen. It seems like a miracle that it happened at all.I am counting this book toward the 2018 non-fiction reading challenge.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

"But how to establish the exact moment in which a story begins? Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. Or else the real story is the one that begins ten or a hundred pages further on, and everything that precedes it is only prologue. The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest--for example the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both--must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story." (p. 153)

This book was tremendously clever and was definitely the most meta book I have ever read. It is about a reader, you, who is reading a book that is being written by another character in the book, and possibly translated by yet another, but it keeps ending abruptly and when the reader finds another copy it is another book. There is another reader also reading the same book as you. In the capable hands of Calvino this isn't confusing.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

The latest in this wonderful mystery series focuses on Quebec's Surete and the opioid crisis. All the usual characters are there and much of the book is set in Three Pines. The structure of this story was quite different from earlier books as it jumps back and forth from a trial in which Gamache is testifying to the events that led up to the trial. This was not my favorite of these books, but was still an excellent novel.
I am counting this toward the Canadian Book Challenge as it is both by a Canadian and set in Canada.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

"Katherine Anne Porter, speaking of fiction, could have been speaking of biography when she said that a human life 'may be almost pure chaos' and that 'the work of the artist, the only thing he's good for, is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.'" (p. 39)

This slim volume contains lots of useful information about the writing of biography including ideas on selecting a subject, organizing your material, sources of information on your subject, discussion of what makes a good biography, and info on what makes good writing. It is an older book and the concept of online research is not part of it, but that info can be found elsewhere.

An example of the advice about structure:

"...every opening should do at least four things. It should (1) announce or foreshadow the main theme of the work (2) meet whatever objections potential readers may have to your subject, (3) orient the reader as to time and place, and (4) engage his mind and heart." (p. 53)

Sunday, January 21, 2018

It wasn't as amazing as Rebecca, but this was an enjoyable novel set in Italy about a man returning to his past and realizing that it wasn't as he thought it had been.
There were quite a few twists and turns in the plot which kept things moving (not easy in a book that takes place entirely in one man's head).
This is my first book for the 2018 What's in a Name Challenge as it's title contains the word "the" twice.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

By Its Cover by Donna LeonMy rating: 4 of 5 starsThis mystery focuses on the theft and vandalism of rare books in a Venetian library. It was very Brunetti-focused, much more so than many of these novels which have more interaction with other characters than this one did. This struck me as kind of a quiet novel. It was excellent however, with lots of observations of the world and fabulous sounding meals. Who has time to make gnocci with ragu for lunch? Paola Brunetti makes time.
This story is set in Venice so I am counting it as my Italian title for the European Reading Challenge.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

"Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there, and it must be supposed that a certain proportion came in because they had nowhere else to go. Others were less easy to classify and less worrying. Why, for instance, was a reasonably prosperous-looking middle-aged woman--the smartness of her clothes detracted from by the dowdy laced-up shoes that told of bad feet--so anxious to get hold of a pre-war Kelly's Directory of Somerset?" (p. 52)

I found Miss Dulcie Mainwaring a delightful character. Very proper and respectable on the outside, but with a sharp observational wit which she mostly keeps to herself. This novel is about a group of people living in and around London (mostly in a suburb near Kensington) and the daily concerns and events of their world. At the start of the story many of them don't know one another, but through the book Pym shows how they are interconnected or brings them together in ways that seem inevitable and connections are made. There are lots of vicars, oceans of tea, and a charming sense of the absurdities of life.This book counts as my British title for the European Reading Challenge.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Marjorie Hillis wrote self-help books beginning in the 1930s for women living alone. This volume looks at the world in which Hillis' books were created and read and the life their author led. More a portrait of a time and place than of a specific person this book was interesting and depressing at the same time. The world that seemed to be on the horizon for white middle class women in 1930s America never materialized and was essentially beaten into submission by the post-WWII boom. Among many other topics Scutts touches on was poet Margaret Fishback, the real life inspiration for Lillian Boxfish. This is a very readable and scholarly work which includes an extensive bibliography.
This is the 1st of the 12 non-fiction books I pledged to read this year for the Nonfiction Reading Challenge.